Inside the wooden horse alone
Wooden walls thin enough to let light through
✲
Humid under wooden skin, like the oak can breathe
Like this dull pulse is the horse’s organ
and they’ve pulled down the city’s bells and put in sirens
so now there’s a nothing that rings and rings
✲
For why it’s all wrong, don’t we always
have answers
how our minds shudder
like hummingbirds’ wings
how we can no longer tell apart the gods
how above our heads, we handhold
our own low-slung haloes
✲
Inside the wooden horse alone
and now the Trojans are coming closer
each voice a grey hook
sinking
into flesh
✲
But when they haul me out, we’ll all see
a girl pretending to be a goddess:
I cannot make an army.
I cannot change shape.
